


So It Is Written

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 15:42:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1653863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John slams the door behind himself one day and never comes back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So It Is Written

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by someone's tags on a post about how different Dean's life could have been if John had left when Dean was little. I saved a link to it, but the blog has since been deleted, so for now the post is lost somewhere in my likes. Whoops.
> 
> Also, disclaimer: This is a lot less optimistic than the tags were.

3.  
John slams the door behind himself one day and never comes back.

Dean’s mommy is different after that. She still makes him pie and gives him hugs and tucks him into bed, but something in her eyes changes. First she gets a look like she remembered something she’d forgotten, but then it turns sad, like maybe she remembered something she didn’t mind forgetting, like having to brush her teeth or finish her vegetables. Dean doesn’t understand, but he tells her it’ll be okay, anyway.

She goes on a trip after that, and Dean is sad and a little scared to see her go, but a nice lady named Missouri stays with him and reads him stories and gives him hugs and tells him not to worry, so it isn’t too bad. They spend a little time each day in Dean’s old nursery, giving it a fresh coat of paint, setting up the crib, dusting the shelves. His mommy gets back just a few hours after they finish the final touches. When she sees it, a few hours after Missouri leaves, she bursts into tears.

Eight months later, Sammy is born.

4.  
Dean wakes one night from a dream about monsters in the nursery. He’s too scared to cry out, but he’s worried about Sammy, so he makes his way to his brother’s room. His mommy is standing across from a man with yellow eyes, the rug pulled back to reveal the rough edge of a circle carved into the floor, something long and shiny with swirly designs all along the sides held in both hands. “Go back to bed, sweetie, I’ll be there in just a minute,” is all she says, and Dean doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t have to be told twice.

He’s barely under the covers when he hears a sound like lightning striking their house. His mom appears a few minutes later, and she looks so, so tired, but she’s smiling. Dean can’t reconcile that with the scene from the nursery, so he smiles back and starts convincing himself he imagined the whole thing.

7.  
Dean is the first kid in his class to kiss a girl on the lips. He likes it.

Dean is also the first kid in his class to kiss a boy on the lips. He likes that, too.

10.  
Dean starts ballet the same year he starts karate.

Some kids snicker about it, sure, but none of them are as cool or popular as Dean, and none of the people who really matter give him crap about it. It doesn’t even phase him until one day someone starts picking on Sammy because of it. Sammy, who’s still a little small for his age. Sammy, who would rather read than do ballet  _or_ karate.

So Dean kicks the kid’s ass and finishes with a graceful pirouette, and that’s the last time anyone messes with either of the Campbell boys.

12.  
Dean isn’t the first kid in his class to start watching Star Trek, but when he does, he decides he likes it better than kissing girls  _or_ boys.

14.  
Dean learns of his father’s second family on the same day he learns of his death, and neither of these things bother him in the slightest.

His mom starts crying, though, and that gets Sammy crying, so before long Dean finds himself between them on the couch, his mom’s head on his shoulder, Sammy’s head in his lap.

Mary recovers first, but even after she’s gotten up to take some aspirin and lay down, Sammy is still sniffling.

“Hey,” Dean whispers conspiratorially, “I bet I know what’ll cheer you up.”

Dean brings in a whole bowl full of carrot sticks (with a whole bottle of ranch dressing for himself; oh, the things he’ll suffer through for the sake of his family) and tells Sammy his bedtime has been officially cancelled.

They spend the rest of the night watching Godzilla movies, and by the time Sammy passes out fifteen minutes after his usual bedtime, his eyes are completely dry.

All in all, Dean figures the day didn’t go too badly.

15.  
Every night for as long as he can remember, the last thing Dean’s mom tells him before he goes to bed is “Angels are watching over you.” It’s not that he stops believing it on purpose; it’s just that one day it stops making sense. The idea of angels is unfathomable enough, but even if he makes the concession that they might exist, every time he watches the news or reads the paper he can’t help but feel that if the angels are doing anything at all, they’re probably judging him. Judging  _everyone_.

Dean doesn’t tell this to his mom. He finds her faith endearing, if just a little naive.

17.  
Dean goes to his first convention dressed as a vanilla mortal. He’s in one of the side rooms waiting for  _Lord of the Rings_ trivia to start when a small voice pipes up next to him, “What are  _you_ supposed to be?”

The girl can’t be older than ten or eleven, prosthetic pointy ears peeking out from long, bright red hair that stands in stark contrast to the greens and browns that make up her elven dress. Dean manages an “I, uh…” before the kid rolls her eyes, turns to the woman sitting next to her, and says, tactlessly, “Mom,  _please_ make sure I don’t grow up to be that  _lame_.”

Dean can tell the girl’s mother is trying her best to look sympathetic, but she only makes it a few seconds before she starts chuckling. “She’s usually so shy,” the woman says, by way of explanation, “but it’s like she becomes a different person when she puts that dress on. Sorry.” But the damage is already done.

Dean never attends another convention out of costume.

18.  
Dean decides to study mechanical engineering. He picks the University of Illinois; not  _the_ top school for his major, but close enough. Stanford is a better school, but it’s so far away. Illinois seems more manageable; he’ll be out of Kansas, but not  _too_ far out.

19.  
Dean’s first college fling is a girl named Rhonda Hurley who he meets in a sociology course he’s taking to fulfill his humanities requirement. Not that Dean has a problem with bossy, but they’ve been dating less than a week when she forces him try on her pink satiny underwear.

Well. “Forces” is a strong word.

The truth is it turns him on, which is great, and it turns her on, which is better.

The following week, Dean repeats the process with Rhonda’s older brother.

He drops the sociology course.

20.  
The summer before his junior year, Dean takes Sammy on a road trip.

They drive wherever they feel like, just enjoying their time together without having to worry about school. They head north first because Sam wants to see Mount Rushmore (“Nerd,” Dean accuses; “Geek,” Sam retorts) before heading east to check out the Wisconsin Dells (after all, Dean reasons, who wouldn’t want an excuse to eat a few dozen kinds of cheese?). From there, they take a ship across Lake Michigan and wind up in Battle Creek, where Dean is noticeably disappointed to find the Kellogg factory no longer offers tours with free samples at the end. Sam rolls his eyes.

Battle Creek isn’t a total loss, though. Sam falls asleep reading  _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone_ , so Dean sneaks out to grab a drink before he hits the sack. It’s there he meets Lisa. Yoga-teacher Lisa. Looking-for-a-good-time Lisa. And, well. What are road trips for?

He has her naked and whispering his name within the hour, and by the next he has her swearing this has been the best night of her life.

Dean leaves as soon as she falls asleep and when he tells Sammy he wants to go home in the morning, his little brother has the decency not to ask why.

21.  
Dean keeps going to church during college even though no one is there to tell him he has to. He isn’t quite sure why; maybe it’s the sense of community. Maybe he still wants to believe in spite of himself. Or maybe he just likes it because it reminds him of his mom. Of family. Of home.

At any rate, he meets Jimmy one Sunday during Christmas break simply by virtue of the fact that he’s an unfamiliar face, and he’ll be damned if it doesn’t feel like fate.

Jimmy’s a few years older and in town on a business trip. When prompted, he reveals he sells ad time for AM radio. Dean pokes fun at him (“Face like yours, why’re you stuck in a boring-ass job like that?”) and he’ll be damned if the way the guy blushes isn’t the most gorgeous thing he’s ever seen.

Jimmy is earnest about everything he does in a way Dean finds incredibly refreshing. He’s kind to fast food workers and his eyes light up when he talks about his parents and he wolfs down every cheeseburger like it’s the best one he’s ever tasted and his faith is utterly, totally unshakeable. Dean expects it to be the first cause of strife between them, but when he admits his own atheism for the first time a few weeks after they start dating, more than just a little ashamed at how uncertain he sounds, Jimmy just takes his hand. “You dummy,” Jimmy says affectionately, kissing Dean’s knuckles, “I have faith enough for us both.”

Dean loves that about him. Dean loves  _everything_ about him.

22.  
Jimmy is there to celebrate Dean’s graduation. After, when Dean asks if he’ll come stay with his family in Lawrence for a while to celebrate Sammy’s acceptance into Stanford, Jimmy accepts.

The truth is that Dean is happy for Sammy, but he resents him, just a little, for going to Stanford, the school that’s so far away, the school Dean turned down _because_ it was so far away. He confides this to Jimmy as they lay next to each other in the too-small bed of his old room.

“You want to stay,” Jimmy says, and Dean can’t decide if he’s relieved or terrified that it isn’t a question.

“I want  _you_ to stay,” Dean whispers, and then he’s suddenly self-conscious, worried it came out too much like a command, so he adds awkwardly, “I mean, if you want to. I want you to. But, you know, it’s uh…it’s your choice.”

Jimmy just smiles at him fondly; chides him affectionately for the over-clarification.

They both stay.

24.  
They can’t get married, of course, but Dean has never been big on little technicalities. He gets down on one knee and offers Jimmy a ring anyway, and when Dean sees the look on Jimmy’s face when he reads the inscription (“My angel”, it reads, on the side that will be in constant contact with his skin), he’s pretty sure it’s the happiest day of his life.

And then Dean wakes up the next day and sees the ring still on Jimmy’s finger and realizes this is the happiest day of his life, too, and so is the next, and the next, and the next.

27.  
Dean doesn’t think he wants kids until he meets Sam and Jess’. He and Jimmy take a road trip to California a few weeks after little Mary is born, and he’ll be damned if she isn’t the cutest thing he’s ever seen, all blond hair and blue eyes, just like her namesake.

On the drive back to Kansas, Dean’s so preoccupied with trying to figure out how to broach the subject with Jimmy that when the latter interrupts his reverie with a sudden “I think we should adopt”, Dean nearly crashes the damn car.

Soon they’ll find out the process is excruciatingly lengthy and expensive, but for now, they pull over to the side of the road, climb into the back seat, and celebrate the decision in a distinctly not-capable-of-producing-children sort of way.

29.  
Eight years. They get eight wonderful years together before things start to go wrong.

Jimmy starts asking questions out of the blue to which Dean never has an answer. Questions about whether or not he still considers himself an atheist. What he thinks it would be like to be an angel. What he would do if he were given the opportunity to change the world. It scares him.

Dean only manages to get through a couple days of this before he asks Jimmy if he’s okay. If he thinks he needs to see a doctor. But Jimmy insists that he doesn’t, so Dean lets it go. Drops the subject because he trusts Jimmy, he trusts him, he  _swears_ he trusts him. But at night, Dean prays in secret to a God he doesn’t believe in, shapeless supplications into which he pours all his love and his fear.

One evening, Dean is agonizing about what he should or shouldn’t do when he hears the front door slam. He waits a minute until he can’t stand it, can’t bear the worry gnawing away at him, and heads out the front door. It’s nearly ten o’clock at night, but Jimmy is standing in the yard in a suit and overcoat as though he’s heading in to work.

Dean wants to run to him, grab his shoulders and shake him out of whatever trance he seems to have gotten himself into, but instead he just stands on the porch and asks, tentatively, “Jimmy?”

“I am not your lover,” Jimmy answers, and disappears.

31.  
Dean prays every night for five hundred and fourteen days for Jimmy to return.

On the five hundred and fifteenth day, he’s on his way to blackout drunk when he blinks and suddenly there’s a guy standing between him and the TV, some punk-ass kid with dirty blonde hair and this stupid smirk on his face. Through the haze of the alcohol, Dean manages to think of his half-brother — Alex? Avery? Something like that — and wonders vaguely if he should do something. Throw a bottle at him. Kick his ass. Call the police. But he doesn’t have the energy for any of those things, so instead he just asks, “What the fuck do you want?”

The kid manages to look even more smug as he says, “I’m Michael. And it’s not about what I want. It’s about what you want.”

Dean barely dares to even  _think_  Jimmy’s name, but when Michael speaks next, Dean is hit with the unpleasant realization that maybe someone has been listening to his prayers after all.

“I can take you to him. If only you’ll give me your permission.”

Dean doesn’t even hesitate.

He says yes.


End file.
